Tuesday, March 3, 2009

This very simple, roasted chicken video recipe is an example of how appearances can be very misleading in the kitchen. The sauce is built from the caramelized lemon and chicken juices stuck to the bottom of the roasting pan, which take the form of an unappetizing black tar. If you didn't know any better, your instincts would tell you to discard the darkest bits before making the "jus."

That would be a big mistake. While it looks like it would taste like a charcoal briquette, it actually tastes like….taste. To borrow the catch phrase from a currently running soup commercial, "I like the taste of taste." As many of you already know, there are four primary tastes, salty, sour, bitter, and sweet.

If you take a small bit of the black tar from the bottom of the roasting pan, and pop it in your mouth, instead the one-dimensional burnt flavor you may expect, you should get an intense, very intense, combination of all four tastes.

I'm not sure why this is, but when we dissolve this super four-taste-tar with some additional stock, it makes a great dressing/sauce with which to finish the dish. As you'll see, I used romaine, but this same recipe works great with watercress, arugula, or spinach. Also, don't be afraid of a little bit of chicken fat. Think of this sauce as a warm dressing - in fact, this probably has less fat than if you just ate the dry chicken on a fully dressed salad. Enjoy!

Thanks Chef John. I have a chicken that's been waiting in the freezer for some inspiration worth the trouble of digging it out and thawing it. It is going to meet to some lemon juice this weekend. This sounds (and looks) very tasty.

I agree Terry, according to the dictionary, the fifth taste is umami. This comes from the Japanese word which means roughly "delicious flavor", although "brothy", "meaty", or "savory" have been proposed as alternate translation. This corresponds to the flavor of glutamates, especially monosodium glutamate. :)

Hey, that's some powerful information that you've written. I take much care to make sure that the food we saute doesn't leave burnt bits in the pan, primarily because we like gravy. I just assumed that a black bit or two would ruin the gravy.

The sad result is that sometimes the skin on the chicken is limp instead of crispy. NO LONGER! We're making chicken tomorrow night, and this time, it's 'flame on'!

Not 'flame on' like in your town... I meant it like in 'the Fantastic Four human torch' kind of way :).

I was just wondering: how did you figure the thing with the black bits out?Did you just try one of the black bits, found that it tasted quite good and incorporated it into the recipe, or is this a common technique?

I have bought a big chicken and am planning on doing this recipe this weekend. I don't have a lovely roasting pan like yours so am wondering about my best option. I have a large heavy bottom stainless steel saute pan which I think would work but you didn't mention stainless steel. Would that be ok? I do have a pyrex lasagne type pan but is that really safe to put on a gas stove? I had one explode in the oven once, so I am gun shy. (ok, ok, so I learned the hard way not to put cold liquid into a hot glass pan)

Well that was yummy. I need to get a proper pan for this though because with my high sided roaster in never really rendered down to the black bits. If it was this good without the black bits I can't wait to try it with a proper pan.

I made this last night but I NEVER got black tar in the bottom of my pan. Cooked it longer, removed some liquid... a nice brown colour but no black. Any idea why? I have no access to Meyer lemons so had to use regular. Could it be the higher sugar content in the Meyer lemons that makes it turn black? I am also wondering if I could adapt this to chicken parts as roasting a whole bird makes me cranky.